Alec Newman

Dr. Brent Hege

FYS 102-28/29

29 April 2020

From what I can tell, community is just an agreement of everyone in a society. Not every

community is the same, but each one has its standards and guidelines that its people live under.

Whether these guidelines are good or bad, I think they are there to make sure everyone has an

understanding of what is going on around each individual. When thinking about communities I

never really considered there to be any negative effects involved, only the good. What I found

out is that there is a strict relationship between the benefits that communities create and the

negatives it tries to subdue. These benefits include being food, shelter, clothing, and medicine,

but at the same time these benefits bring people closer together resulting in conflict. What I’ve

come to realize is that even in the most ideal communities, where all of life's problems have

vanished, there are still going to be some drawbacks. From looking at some of the literature that

we read over the semester, there is almost a direct correlation between what a society thinks is

ideal for itself and the lack of freedom that society has. For example when looking at Plato’s

Republic the most ideal society has direct placement of where one is in society (class) and no

ability to change. When looking at Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” their idea to create a

perfect community/society was to nerf all the skills people have to make everyone equal. These

may look like communities, but what I’ve figured out what was missing was freedom. Freedom

appears to be the center point for communities, whether it be giving people the right to say
whatever they want, giving the right to do whatever they want to do, or being whatever they

want to be. The only limit is to never let someone infringe the freedoms of other people within

the community.

From being in class there were really two types of ways I looked at “justice”. There was

the concept of “just” laws and people where the actions that were taken are to make everything

fair between all parties. The other way I came to look at justice was the activeness to better the

community one was in. This was mostly influenced by Plato’s “Republic” with how things were

done in Kallipolis, where the people did what was best for everyone with no reaction to freedom

at all. What struck me the most about these two concepts of justice was the weight it actually put

on the people to come up with the concepts of being right and wrong. Things have appeared to

be right and wrong ever since I was born, but this is because the societal norms have been

created and established far before I was alive. Even though that justice has been established as a

whole, there is still room for singular interpretations of the concept. Before this Faith, Doubt, and

Reason, I would have never realized that even though I can differ in opinions with someone

when it comes to doing the right thing, we potentially can both be right.

Of course all humans have rights, but should those rights be different all around the

world? Human rights almost seem trivial in modern America because of the access to all of the

good things that we have, but in some parts of the world people just are not as fortunate as we

are. Just like justice, there are two forms of rights that people are assigned, their “foundational”

rights as I would call them, and the rights that their government permits them. While these two

lists should look identical, sadly this is not the case. But this begs the question, “what makes a

right, a right?” Is it something that will help them live, or is it something that makes them further
their happiness? It is a hard question to answer considering it affects everyone on earth, but from

our short time together I really do think it has to deal with what is “fair” to everybody. When

reading The United Nations “Declaration of Human Rights” there is an overwhelming sense of

making sure everyone gets treated the exact same despite where one lives. However, this is not

the case in most non-western countries for the most part. This is also quite influential in my

reason to thinking that maybe their ideal community/society is not fair. Things have been

established to be as selfish as possible and the people there like it better that way. Does that

make them wrong? I don’t think so considering their community was formed just like the

communities we formed.

As much as the government should be used to protect the rights of the people, we have

gotten some great examples this semester of why government should be hands off when it comes

to the basic rights of its citizens. When reading “1984” I had many questions that came to mind

of whether a central government should be allowed to know everything one does even if they

don’t inhibit that person. What I came to find out is privacy probably follows right in line with

other big human rights such as liberty and security. Being able to think independently of any

other force is extremely powerful and really is a liberty in itself. When it comes to education,

economics, and technology, this then brings the conclusion just like “community” that maybe

people should not be governed by them, but liberated by them. Having these extra things to make

someone’s life better is still a responsibility, but also a way to get closer with each other.

However, when people start to get closer to one another, more problems do arise.

But what helped me the most during our semester together, the discussion or the literature

we read? As for the texts, I think the dystopian novels impacted my semester the most. When it
came to justice, community and the technical parts of society the dystopian novels “1984” and

“The Handmaid’s Tale” shaded all of these topics in a different light drastically compared to the

other things we read. Being able to see that there can be a community full of hate is really what

made me realize that community is not necessarily just about the ability to come together to do

only good, but also has the ability to do harm as well. As for human rights and justice, maybe it

is possible to have none. When these two novels make so much sense and these two things have

completely disappeared from their societies, maybe there is some merit to these lackluster

communities even though they are completely awful. The one other main text that stood out to

me when it came to influencing my opinion was definitely Freud’s “Civilization and its

Discontents”. While I knew people were generally awful, I did not know the mechanics of these

awful traits and how they are affected by other people. Getting a better understanding of what

makes people tick in societies really helped me figure out that some things will happen naturally

whether we decided them or not. For example, laws are created completely from scratch from

humans, but they in turn ended up extremely similar all across the world. It is not because

coincidence, but because how humans are hardwired like Freud tells us

When we openly spoke in class there were an absurd amount of times where I slightly

disagreed with some people, but tried to avoid the conflict. The thing is though that just like I’ve

learned from going to college and especially now in this FYS is that there will always be people

who feel extremely differently than how I see things. This is probably my most important

takeaway from this class as a whole considering that people will disagree with me my whole life

and I should figure out how to handle those people.

 I can’t believe any society was ever made when it came to working in groups. Making

sure each person had a say on what they wanted in the community was almost impossible

considering that each topic ended up being disputed. Whether it was education, the economy, or

government there was bound to be some sort of disagreement. When it came to things such as the

rights of the people it was quite an easy topic to decide on, but how these rights were going to be

handled was the hardest part. In totality, working with my group gave me an understanding that

these topics are not meant to be handled in a light way from any direction. All of the issues that

are present within a community are tied to another part even when I thought they wouldn’t be.

Specifically for community, I worked myself into realizing that there actually needs to

be more reason for the people to come together. By the end of working on the project, I figured

out that while I made things so good for the individual, I completely forgot about the community

as a whole and making sure people were able to come together and be happy. This was my one

regret about my ideal society. As for government, education, economics, technology, and all of

those sorts of things that when actually I had to work on finding a solution, I came to find out

there is never a single one. All of these problems are multifaceted and need multiple solutions to

solve them, but the biggest problem of all is finding out that one solution ruins the solution to

another problem. A specific example of this deciding the tax policy in my city, Georgetown. I

wanted there to be immense freedom within the community, but at the same time there was

going to have some drawbacks. I, myself, am a big capitalist. I understand the influence money

has on people and I wanted people to be able to make it, but at the same time other more

important things needed to be paid for. This resulted in a “fair” tax code exempting people from
being able to make tons of money. Was it a perfect solution? No, but was it supposed to be a

perfect city? No again.

The main thing that comes to mind when talking about this Coronavirus pandemic is our

community and how we have handled the situation. While it is our natural inclination to come

together to solve our problems, it’s almost funny how the right thing to do now is to get away

from each other. What’s so interesting to me is how I never realized how we had a tiny

community in our classroom this entire time. We came together to discuss issues and tried to

come to solutions. The thing about the Covid pandemic, which is a sad reality we’re in, is I

found out what I really needed, and what I am able to live without in society. Being able to

determine if leaving your house is a right or not really does fall in the wheelhouse of if

something like this, the virus, can break your human rights. What I’m starting to realize is that

there is only one thing that can destroy your rights and freedom and that's imminent danger.

While the danger is not so present for some as it is for others, there is still right to life. Which

brings me to the next point of that since we have started quarantine, the discussion we had about

the hierarchy of needs/rights becomes more prevalent. While there are things to further a society

like better economic and environment policy, it still comes down to people’s basic needs being

met. That really is the basis of every society and community.

Faith, Doubt, and Reason has been an extremely influential part of my life for the last

semester. I really wish I could’ve been a part of this “community” from day one of last semester,

but life is not perfect. It’s crazy to think that we have covered all of these topics in such a short

period of time, especially in the midst of a pandemic!